Canada and the Canadians, Vol. 1Bonnycastle, Richard Henry, Sir
History
Canada and the Canadians, Vol. 1
Bonnycastle, Richard Henry, Sir
Canada -- Description and travel; Ontario -- Description and travel
A moment shows you a long hut, formed of logs of wood, with a roof of
branches, covered by birch-bark, and by its side, or near the fire,
several nondescript sties or pens, apparently for keeping pigs in,
formed of branches close to the ground, either like a boat turned
upside down, or literally as a pigsty is formed, as to shape.
In the large hut, which is occasionally more luxurious and made of slabs
of wood or of rough boards, if a saw-mill is within reasonable distance,
and there is a passable wood road, or creek, or rivulet, navigable by
canoes, you see some barrel or two of pork, and of flour, or biscuit, or
whiskey, some tools, and some old blankets or skins. Here you are in the
lumberer's winter home--I cannot call him woodman, it would disgrace the
ancient and ballad-sung craft; for the lumberer is not a gentle woodman,
and you need not sing sweetly to him to "spare that tree."
The larger dwelling is the hall, the common hall, and the pig-sties the
sleeping-places. I presume that such a circumstance as pulling off
habiliments or ablution seldom occurs; they roll themselves in a blanket
or skin, if they have one, and, as to water, they are so frequently in
it during the summer, that I suppose they wash half the year
unintentionally. Fat pork, the fattest of the fat, is the lumberer's
luxury; and, as he has the universal rifle or fowling-piece, he kills a
partridge, a bear, or a deer, now and then.
I was exploring last year some woods in a newly settled township, the
township of Seymour West, in the Newcastle district of Upper Canada,
with a view to see the nakedness of the land, which had been represented
to me as flowing with milk and honey, as all new settlements of course
are said to do. I wandered into the lonely but beautiful forest, with a
companion who owned the soil, and who had told me that the lumberers
were robbing him and every settler around of their best pine timber.
After some toiling and tracing the sound of the axes, few and far
between, felling in the distance, we came upon the unvarying boy at
cookery, the axe, and the dog.
My conductor at once saw the extent of the mischief going on, and,
finding that the gang, although distant from the camp-fire, was
numerous, advised that we should retrace our steps. We however
interrogated the boy, who would scarcely answer, and pretended to know
nothing. The dog began to be inquisitive too, and one of the dogs we had
with us venturing a little too near a savoury piece of pork, the nature
of the young half-bred ruffian suddenly blazed out, and the axe was
uplifted to kill poor Dash. I happened to have a good stick, and
interfered to prevent dog-murder, upon which the wood-demon ejaculated
that he would as soon let out my guts as the dog's, and therefore my
companion had to show his gun; for showing his teeth would have been of
little avail with the young savage.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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